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Topic: An over pinched Itoigawa (Read 27605 times)

Here it is after initial wiring. It's a lot more open. As you can see, sunlight can now penetrate to the interior. I wonder how long it's been?

I can still tweek the wiring once Gremel gets me some 20 gauge!

About the lack of assymetry: Owen is right. The two lower left branches are half as thick as the two right ones. And they're the ones with the juvenile foliage, too. I could Jin them! And add some shari to an otherwise plain trunk.

Now that I've got it all wired out, you can see the branch structure when looking inside. And it's kinda like looking back in time. Kind of like an archeologist.

Looking in, most of the branches branch about 2 inches from the trunk. Then they go on a couple or 3 inches inches, then they branch again into the multitude of crotch branches, all weak, and again about they are 2 to 3 inches long.

So, my take from this: when the tree left Japan, the foliage was at where the first set of branching is. Closest to the trunk. Then, it sat in quarantine for three years with no maintenance. And the branches grew to where the second set of branches start. The ones with all the crotch twigs. And from there, these have elongated slowly over the past 8 years as he sheared back.

What would be interesting would be to see if I could get the canopy reduced back to the way it looked when it left Japan. Or close.

Looking in, most of the branches branch about 2 inches from the trunk. Then they go on a couple or 3 inches inches, then they branch again into the multitude of crotch branches, all weak, and again about they are 2 to 3 inches long.

So, my take from this: when the tree left Japan, the foliage was at where the first set of branching is. Closest to the trunk. Then, it sat in quarantine for three years with no maintenance. And the branches grew to where the second set of branches start. The ones with all the crotch twigs. And from there, these have elongated slowly over the past 8 years as he sheared back.

I'm thinking that more thinning is required, especially on the lowest branches. There's just a lot of redundant branches. Long spindly ones with just a tuft of weak foliage at the end. It doesn't have well structured branches 2 with left/right alternating sub branches and then tertiary branches.

I've allowed sunlight in. Now, nature needs to do her thing. And I'll continue to thin and cut back.

Too many branches GrassHopper. If you pruned it like Owen Suggests, it will be in scale but without ant scale foliage as it will most likely completely revert to juvenile needle foliage. Prune it after it gets strong again. Nice tree.